


You Turn Every Head But You Don't See Me

by ScarTissue



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Canon!Jack, I blame tumblr ok, M/M, Song Lyrics, but terribly misguided bunny, human!Bunnymund, not dark bunny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarTissue/pseuds/ScarTissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack had a tendency to break rules, even his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> P.S listen to Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung as you read!
> 
>  
> 
> UPDATE: Ive decided to continue this stpry, due to the response to it. Thank you for that, and the next chapter should be up within the week!

"I've been, watching your world from afar, and I've been, trying to be where you are..."

First rule of immortality: Don't get into a non-solitary routine.

Jack sat brooding on that particular thought on an early January night, seated deep in inch thick ice on a fire escape. The building's red brick was hard against his back as New York city raged six stories below him, as active at midnight as it was at noon. Jack paid it no mind, even savored the uncomfortable friction as he leaned into it, knees drawn against his chest. He breathed out slowly, no steam made in the frigid air. He quietly hummed out a tune, matching the rhythm of the song drifting out of the cracked window a few inches above his head, voice softly echoing over the screaming of the city below it.

"... And I've been, secretly falling apart, unseen..."

The winter spirit had found himself inexplicably in this position every other night for the last two months. It started almost three months ago, an accident really. Jack had been tumbling lazily through the neighborhood, pulling the first shift of that winter in the north east U.S, probably flying closer to apartment complexes than he should've in his sleepy state. He was not five hours away from Burgess, totally focused on getting home... And then he'd heard it.

A half open window had been letting the snow into a loft to his left, fire escape frosting over invitingly. Jack landed softly on the cold metal, sinking down and peering over the ledge as a deep baritone bled into the night. The words were unintelligible, just random gibberish sung to himself as a man bent over a canvas inside the apartment. Jack let out a low whistle, taking in the man's physique. Uncouth or not, built-like-a-brick-shithouse was sometimes all that cut it. His face would have been more handsome if it hadn't been screwed up in concentration, but the peircing green eyes and salt and pepper hair that went into side burns on a strong jaw still suggested acttractiveness. That voice though... Jack sat back and curled up to listen as the man painted, the tone gentle and soothing to the boy. He sang in a deep baritone, smooth as honey and a warm comfort for some reason. Jack closed his eyes to let it envelope him. Just a short nap would be fine. 

(He woke up over a day later, sprawled out on the hard metal and better rested than he'd been in many, many, many years.)

Jack had gone back whenever he was in the north east then, craving the sweet, nightmareless sleep just as much as the beautiful voice that came with it. Jack never found the window fully closed, but sometimes saw the man (who was apparently called Aster, as he learned from a late night phone call) cooking or reading instead of the standard art work he came to expect. "He isn't a siren," Jack took to telling himself, "you can stop coming when you want." 

The night he told himself that it'd already been a biweekly thing. 

It wasn't that it was a routine, until it was. And while Jack kept his rules as a personal joke, and a terrible reminder of what he was, all immortals learned them. Don't get attatched, don't get comfortable. You live too long for such luxuries.

Jack let his head loll back onto the brick and strained to hear Aster in the kitchen, quietly singing along with some alternative record. The winter spirit could feel his eyelids getting heavy, and his body relaxing. He hoped Aster remembered to turn over the stove...

"I put a spell on you, you fall asleep and I'll put a spell on yooou..."

This was gonna get him in trouble.

Jack had a tendency to break rules, even his own.

 

"... And when I wake you up I'll be the first thing you see, and you'll realize you love me..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just remember, you asked for this.

He goes back, of course.

 

Its only been a week, and Jack can't even be assed to feel bad about it either. He's been drowsy all day, like gravity is pulling on him harder than usual, tugging on his ankles with iron hands. His whole body feels like its covered in a lead blanket, threatening to drag him out of the sky into the unforgiving dirt.  
He needs to sleep. Not just toss and turn while stuck in a hellish nightmare.

 

And nightmares are all he's had, lately. Jack honestly couldn't discern when this all had started, but something was... different about his dreams recently. Instead of the restless, agitated sleep he was accostumed to, or even odd musings that his subconscious brewed up, Jack was jerked awake screaming his lungs out every morning, clawing at his chest and checking for bars around him. 

 

For an elemental that was effectively homeless (and houseless), Jack's mind was spinning itself wild with visions of being trapt. In his dreams, every one the same, Jack was seeing out of his own eyes in a softly lit room. He lay curled up on a large couch, pillowed on top of someone, whose arms were steel girders around him. The windows let slanted moonlight in through bars, like an old fashioned jail cell, and even the side of the door he can see is barricaded by bands of iron. Jack realizes he's being held by a man. He could crush the boy with a single flex.  
He's comfortable though. Where panic and fear should be building in his chest, screeching at his limbs to thrash and get far, far away from here, there is only a steady drum of a heart beneath his ear, and a warmth he's never known. He feels safe in that place, caged by this phantom's embrace that is so solid, so loving, so unbreakable. Feels happy.

 

And that scares him more than anything.

 

Aster's apartment building is in view now, and the fright bubbling in Jack's chest boils out. He relaxes immediatly, and simply stands on the fire escape for a moment, soaking in the atmosphere. Aster is singing again, but the windows fogged over from the opposing tempertures, his tall form only a vague outline. The baritone sound is as sure as it always is, but the words are indecipherable to the winter spirit. He listens harder, but its not anything Jack's ever heard as a language. But its not gibberish, hes positive  
...

 

The music is louder than before, he notices. Jacks eyelids are getting heavy, past tired into full fledged fatigue. His hands are too weak to grip the railing and hold himself up, and a dull thud echoes off the metal when he hits it. He dimly registers the window cracking open wider, paint flaking off in the cold night air. He can't make his mouth move, can't even lift his head up to see Aster look for the cause of a sound that shouldn't have been heard. Jack uses the last vestiges of strength, before he sinks into blackness too deep and oppressing to be normal even for him, and fights to snap his eyes open at the feeling of being lifted into someone's arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this is gonna be pretty dark. No non-con, no gore but its unsettling. And updates may be sporadic at best. Thank you for the feedback and demand!


	3. Chapter 3

 

Darkness wraps around him completely, leaving him immobile, small and prone, swallows his shouts that could wake the dead-

 

" _Would you fight it, Youngling? Would you choose this over what We can give you?"_

 

It speaks to him in a disembodied voice that is everywhere around him and no where but in his head all at once, loud as thunder and soft as birdsong. He can't think over the incredible sound, but can see his life flash in front of his cerulean eyes, lightening strikes of moments that flood and drown him.

 

_"What do you fight to keep? Why would you?"_

 

He struggles to twist out of the cocooning grip, but can't so much as find a kink in the lead blanket around him. In his mind's eye, the first few years of his existence pass. Fear clouded him for so long, confusion and loneliness filling his head with its frantic buzzing, no answers to be given or taken.

The Moon tells him one thing, and one thing only.

He watches as a child walks through him for the first time, and he feels his heart tear out and try to string itself together all over again, and is cold for a moment again, colder than anyone could survive.

He sinks a little further.

 

_"Who would want this? All this pain?"_

 

It happens again and again, people pass through him like he's not even there, even when he talks and yells and grabs at them. Other spirits turn up their noses at the young, noisy winter elemental, and even after he slowly pieces together what's going on there is no place for him in the established clans of spirits, only lonely city streets to roam, looking for something he's losing hope in finding.

 

" _All this solitude?"_

 

He plays pranks and pulls stunts that nearly get him killed, time and again. Sneaks onto Olympus and steals a lyre, just to hear the ruckus caused by someone noticing him. Hops on and off Asgard, and puts Loki to shame on the iced over bridge. Gets caught and beaten within an inch of his life more times than he can count, but someones speaking to him and touching him, even if its insults and punches instead of whispers and friendly pats.

Its a hundred years before a word is truly spoken to him. _A hundred years._

 

_"All this despair?"_

 

In the twilight of the midnight sun, farther north than even the wendigo tred, he lays contorted on the bottom of a cliff. The ice under him is turning to red slush on his clothes and all around him, refreezing quickly into fern patterns of crimson crystals that fade to pink at the edges. Blood spills from his busted jaw and out of his mouth, legs twisted under him, and he's screaming not out if pain but out of rage and desperation. "You put me here!" he hollered at the Moon, arching his back in and effort to stand, to fly up and face his maker, tormenter. " _You_ put me here and tell me nothing, and you won't even let me die! I CAN'T EVEN DI-"

Something snaps in his back then and everything just caves under him in the snow, and he doesn't move for a long, long, long time.

 

_"You're a tragedy, boy. It doesn't have to be this way-"_

 

Another thousand memories fly by, and his resolve weakens with each one. Looking into windows and hanging around thresholds, stealing mere seconds of warmth and love that he can never own.

 

_"You don't have to feel like this! We can help you-"_

 

Years go by for the boy, decades, centuries of insurmountable pain that comes to nothing and comes of nothing, a name made for him as a pest and a nuisance. The trickster, the prankster, the winter spirit just like the rest. He watches a smile stay on his face even as hope dies in his eyes.

 

_"We **want** to help you. None of our children suffer like this. We wouldn't allow it. Just go to sleep, tama. Sleep and choose us, our tamariki will hold you close."_

 

He struggles with the last of his strength, but can feel himself wondering, what it would be to accept the unknown offer. No amount of thrashing seems to lift the bonds that tamp him down, but even if it did it would never make the aching in his soul go away, the dull pain of lost chances.

 

_"Just sleep-"_

 

The tension in him is gone, and the voice, which he now knows is a woman, two women, coos encouraged at the heaviness of fatigue settling in his bones. He's so tired. He's been so tired, and the Moon and winter are a far away thought to him.

 

_"Sleep, and find peace when you wake-"_

 

Theres nothing to fight for, he realizes. No person, no purpose. Only a song in the dark called to him, and Aster never knew he was alive. If he was alive.

 

His heart is too empty beat on its own anymore.

 

Something catches in him then, a warmth spreading through him like fires been injected straight into his veins and knits his chest together in knots of heat where ice used to be. If the voice had a face it would be smiling delightedly, but instead coos with affection at him as he begins to gasp for breath, body overwhelmed by the magic coursing in it.

 

" _Thats it, my whangai. Let it go."_

 

His body settles to the floor again, unbinded and relaxed. He just feels so warm, really warm. Like every family moment he's longed for, an emotion sweeping him up in its arms to stay, to protect. It washes through him, chasing the loneliness, the angst and the grief out. It leaves his fingers, his chest, his feet and his legs, only lingering at the fading edges of his consciousness.

He can sleep now, he thinks. Wants to.

 

The voice is real now; she, they brushing his eyes closed. It feels like color on his skin.

 

If he could see, he'd swear she was wearing a beatific grin.

 

**_"You're ours, now._ **

 

 

 

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

 

"-ey!"

 

Jack blinks slowly at the voice, momentarily blinded by harsh sunlight. What...?

 

"Hey! Look who's finally up, yea?"

 

Jack flutters his eyes again, shifting up from his position in his back, laid out on a... couch? Yea, thats right. On a couch with a soft blanket spread over him, pooling at his waist as he struggled to sit up.He would've fallen back if not for a strong arm under his shoulders, dragging him to lean against the armrest, gentle yet firm.

"Take it easy there, mate. Ya gave me a right scare last night."

 

Last night?

 

Jack wracks his brain as he takes in his surroundings. It was a small loft, the area that would traditionally be separate rooms designated only by the furniture in their respective places. Jack half lay on a large, dark blue couch in the middle of the floor, a t.v set to his left and kitchen to the right. An unmade double bed sat obscured by a dark oak chest and easel in the north east alcove, snug in the dip of the wall. He can see a worn metal door directly in front of him, paintings adorning the brick walls, most photographs on closer inspection.

He realizes he has never been here before.

 

He turns his head to look up, and can barely catch his breath.

 

The man who spoke is still holding him, though Jack is now situated against the armrest. Tan skin clings to hard muscle, not beefy but far past lean, and the red of his plaid shirt offsets it nicely. Jack absolutely does not gape at the well developed forearm in front of him, but squirms a bit as he realizes he's being caged in by the man. Piercing green eyes gaze at him intently, not angry but simply concentrated; and a attractive grin stretches on a strong jaw, slightly moving salt and pepper side burn jutting from tousled hair.

He gulps before speaking.

"Um... What do you mean last night?" He asks. Jack has seen him before. He can't place him, but... There's something. His name's just on the tip of his tongue-

 

"Ya don't remember?" The man's face contorts into concern, but his eyes only sharpen. It doesn't match. "Ah found ya on the fire escape, out cold. Ah thought ya were the upstairs neighbor, and had fallen down drunk from the next one up. Ya had quite the party last night in 5B. Woulda called the coppers, if Ah didn’t think they’d send ya to juvie." He chuckled to himself at the innocent rib.

 

Jack furrowed his brow, barely hearing him. What had he been doing last night? All his mind was fuzzy, like there was a veil over his memories. His name was… Jack, he knew. Jack Frost rang clearly through his mind when he searched it, but not much else. He couldn't recall any 5B, or even a friend or relative that lived there.  Jack turned head to the left wall, photos of people and places strewn artistically in groups. Tan skinned boys and girls crowded around a table in one, with the messy dark hair and light eyes as his unknown rescuer, obviously a happy family. It sent a strange muted pang through Jack’s chest, but was gone as fast as it came.

****  
  


He couldn’t remember any friends or relatives at all, actually.

****  
  
  


“I…”

“Ah!” The man suddenly exclaimed, “Being rather rude here, aren't Ah?” The man extended his hand, another smile blooming on his face.

“E. Aster Bunnymund, but ya can call me Aster.”

****  
  


Jack cautiously shook his hand, wary from his current state.

Aster… He _knew_ that name.

“Jack Frost,” he started, not sure what else he might say if asked. Aster finally leaned back to sit on the coffee table in front of them, elbows resting on his knees, only a touch closer than a normal person would consider comfortable. Jack brushes it off, glad for the closeness. He doesn't want to be left unanchored, inexplicably.                                      “Um, this is probably gonna sound weird… But I can’t remember where I am for the life of me,” he confessed.

****  
  


Aster didn’t look surprised at his admission. “You must’ve took one hell of a hit to the head when you feel,” he mused. “And like Ah said, you lot were off yer asses last night. Ah wouldn’t be surprised if ya took a day or two to come back around the bend.” At Jack’s dismayed expression, he added, “Maybe you just need to think on it.”

****  
  


Jack squinted in concentration. “I was going somewhere,” he dragged out of his brain, and eyes lightened as it came together. “No where in particular, just been traveling a while. You might be right about the party.” Jack thought that was close. He remembered wandering in strange towns and cities, hanging out on fire escapes and balconies, and maybe university halls, packed with people that didn’t seem to be aware of him.. He had been doing something though… He scratched his left hand idly, quelling an itch. “I’m pretty sure I’m here for school.”

****  
  


Aster nodded. “Lotta freshman get in trouble round this time of year, especially ones new to the big apple. Ya remember yer dorm? I just moved out of mine, for mah last year. Maybe yer the bloke who took my roommate. God help ya,’’ he tacked on with a shudder.

Jack shook his head. “Can’t find much more than that.” He rose from his seat and stretched out sore limbs, plan formulating already. Injury aside, he refused to impose on Aster when he’d already robbed the man of his couch. (And to get out of there before he offered the poor guy sexual favors in exchange for some shoes and a roof). He didn't want to leave, but god only knows if Aster was a creep who roofied him last night, no matter how much he was ~~charmed~~ swayed by him. Something else was burning in him as strode away, unconnected to the rest. It just felt _wrong_ to be away from here. “I think I remember where the university is, so I can head down and check out my forms. Thanks for all this,” he turned to walk out, throwing a grateful smile over his shoulder.

“Wait!”

****  
  


Jack was jerked back abruptly as a hand closed around his wrist, and turned to Aster, whose expression was determined. “Ya can’t just walk off by yerself with a head injury!”

****  
  


Aster released him as he took in his widened eyes and tense posture. He sighed and scrubbed his face to hide the reddening of his cheeks. Jack snickered internally, fear dispelled at his sheepishness. “Look, Ah know Ah don’t know ya,” he began, “but Ah’m not some putz who lets a lost kid off on his own in New York.” Jack snorted at being called a kid, indignant. He didn’t feel like a kid.

“If yer a student like me, its likely ya don’t have insurance, so Ah can’t take ya to hospital,” He peered Jack straight in the eye now, gauging the lightened situation. Jack met his eyes, and could not look away. “But you can stay here till things clear up for ya. Ah just- Ah know how this might look. But Ah would never forgive myself if something happened to somebody when Ah could have helped them.”

****  
  


Jack mowed over the conversation. Aster seemed nice, seemed kind to be honest. He didn’t think he was a creep at least- as a matter of fact, Jack was unsettlingly not suspicious of the man. He felt totally comfortable, and since his head was out of service-

He might as well trust his gut.

****  
  
  


The grin he gave Aster was wide and genuine. “You’d really let me crash here? I might be some clumsy serial killer,” he joked.

Aster smiled back, and Jack did his best not to blush.

“Careful there, Ah could still throw ya back out the window.”

****  
  


Their chuckles echoed in the otherwise silent apartment, bouncing off the walls. The room was warm, despite the big crack in the window leading to the balcony, glass shattered patterns branching out, resembling frost. Jack could see himself across the room, and continued laughing through the sudden shock, though he couldn’t place why he felt it.

****  
  


Their reflections were distorted in the fractures, only showing Jack at an awkward spiral. The boy was barefoot and wore brown pants and a well worn blue hoodie, pale peach skin glowing with life tight to his thin frame. Brown hair stuck up at odd angle, making large blue eyes stand out brilliantly and match the fast approaching december twilight outside.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This kind of happened tp me, except instead of an adorable corpse boy it was the snotty neighbor kids.


End file.
